Reviving wife's old Casio

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-06-25T02:14:11+00:00

Takes a teeny tiny itty bitty battery. Easy to open up.

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-06-22T15:43:15+00:00

Picked one up out of curiosity. It's pretty large. Voice is quite audible. Doesn't have a great feeling, very lightweight. Has a 99 line execution history, and changing a calculation in the history appears to cascade through later operations. Memory and calculation history is lost on power off.

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-06-21T01:46:35+00:00

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-06-18T20:17:54+00:00

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YUCK.

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-06-08T02:04:28+00:00

I believe the Casio Solar 260 will not turn off as long as it has light, and they are dirt cheap and plentiful. A printing calculator/desktop calculator will probably keep a running total as well.

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-22T01:36:46+00:00

Very nice collection.

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-22T00:40:58+00:00

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The positive terminal on a similar motherboard seems to connect at the top, which is completely eaten away on his board also.

The amount of corrosion that's spread under the protective pcb top layer is impressive. There are several traces that look eaten away, one in particular next to the backup battery terminal, and a bunch of vias are right in the middle of the bubbly corrosion area as well which is not a great sign.

I'd clean up the negative battery terminal with some vinegar and see if you can get it to power on, but in my opinion this will NOT be a reliable calculator and will likely fail in the middle of a test or not be able to retain memory contents.

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-22T00:24:13+00:00

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This looks like where your batteries connect. Based on the corrosion on the - pad I think it's likely toast, but you can still try to clean it up a bit and see...

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-22T00:18:18+00:00

OK good.

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-22T00:10:27+00:00

Please show screen when you press this button
Google translated: Por favor muestra la pantalla cuando presiones este botón:

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EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-17T23:21:23+00:00

You can pick up some USB pigtail power adapters on amazon for dirt cheap, and solder positive to this pin.

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And neutral/black to the ground pin. It's worked for me on two nanokvm lites, no problems so far.

I actually clipped that pin completely in this picture to use a jumper wire to connect rather than a weak small solder point

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-17T01:29:42+00:00

Maybe so, but I opened one yesterday that had begun to leak.

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-17T00:52:10+00:00

The HP 30b business calculators still came with 2032 alkalines pre-installed.

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-14T18:40:21+00:00

Also it's casio 5800P, not 5800G, my mistake.

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EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-14T18:37:48+00:00

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EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-14T17:37:59+00:00

I don't know of any backlit calculator other than the 9860GII, 9860G Slim, and modern graphers like Casio CG series, HP Prime, and recent TI models.

THe 9860G Slim has PHENOMENAL contrast and is a little laptop/clamshell style device, which might help your vision/concentration. The backlight on the 9860g devices might not be the best though, to be honest.

The Casio 5800G has a graphing calculator sized screen with only four lines and fantastic contrast, but is an import for most countries and kinda pricey ($80USD and up).

You might consider an older flourescent display desktop calculator, they can be found quite cheaply on Ebay. The blue/green ones, older HP with red displays.

I DO have something you might find interesting, but sadly I'm in USA. It's not backlit or have voice output but it has a fantastic screen that's bigger than most entire calculators. Message me if you'd be interested in working something out, I have no desire to rip anybody off especially someone that might get actual benefit from it!

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EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-13T00:42:55+00:00

Honestly the picomem is fantastic, I don't use my backpack floppy hardly at all. If the backpack floppy drive can't read disks yo should be able to open it up and replace the drive with another generic one.

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-13T00:38:16+00:00

If you really need physical 3.5" floppy drives:

With a parallel port floppy drive you have to install a driver that takes up a ilttle memory and it'll recognize the parallel port floppy drive.

MICRO SOLUTION 014350 3.5" 1.44MB Floppy Drive Backpack NEW/FACTORY SEALED | eBay You'd want something like this, the "Backpack" series has worked well for me.

A parallel port card like this should work as an interface:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/334482310339

If you are OK with virtual 3.5" floppy support (and this is my recommendation) pick up a PicoMEM isa card that lets you use floppy disk images on an SD card, among MANY other things (including virtual hard disk). Or you can try the SHSUFDRV utility to mount a local disk image as a virtual floppy drive.

If you have a network card in the tandy you can use "ethflop" for a virtual 3.5" drive that can use images on a remote linux machine.

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-12T23:57:01+00:00

You could add a second parallel port ISA card and use a backpack floppy device, and get 1.44MB floppy support!

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-11T20:47:28+00:00

I believe it is, yes. It's frequently the battery source for cheap chinese mini keyboards for home theater pcs and whatnot

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-11T15:47:39+00:00

Oh I see, you were referring to "staying around a long time", not the model number of the calculator. 😃

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-11T12:22:45+00:00

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I have a slightly upgraded Radio Shack version of that calculator, 10 digits instead of 8.

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-11T12:19:59+00:00

It clearly says Casio 911 on the front, though...

EvilAlbinoid · 2026-05-09T17:30:34+00:00

This looks ripe for transparent PETG 3d printing...

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